How NOT To Train Your Dog

Training your dog can be a very rewarding experience. Unfortunately, a lot of dog owners underestimate the time and effort required.

The first thing to remember is that a dog is not a furry little human. Although they can be very adept at processing language and command given by humans and may sometimes show very human like qualities, they simply do not reason the same way that humans do. They do not relate cause and effect in the same way that we do.

As a result of this common misconception, you may sometimes become frustrated when training your dog. It may appear that the dog is ignoring you or just being plain stubborn. What is in fact probably happening is that the dog may not understand what you are asking of it. It may make perfect sense to you, but the dog may not have a grasp of what is required.

The first thing to remember is to have a lot more patience that you would with a lot of other things. You may have to repeat a command time and time again before your dog finally gets the idea. Getting frustrated at the length of time the training process may take, is a problem with you and NOT your dog. A dog should never be punished for not learning fast enough.

Part of being more patient, means not physically lashing out when you are getting frustrated with you dogs behavior. Physically reprimanding your dog for not obeying your commands will undo any if not all of the work you have done up to that point. You will only instill fear and mistrust. This will fundamentally affect how your dog responds to you in the future.

Like humans, a dog will naturally follow the members of the pack that it trusts. A dog will act on a purely emotional level without giving 'consideration' to things like humans do. A feeling of mistrust between you and your dog will do nothing to help along your training methods.

So here are a few tips to show you how to train your dog successfully.

- Never ever forget that your dog has a different nature from your own. Dog are not human!

- Never think that you dog can rationalize and connect events across time. Never punish you dog at a later stage for
something it did earlier. The dog will only think you have randomly punished it for nothing, leading to mistrust.

- Never get impatient or frustrated with your dogs progress. Never punish your dog for not learning fast enough.

Follow these top tips, and you will develop a long happy trusting relationship with your dog. An ideal basis for a successful training regime.